Well I'm back. I noticed mutterings that I needed to post, partly due to totally erroneous claims that I was threatening the top of the leaderboard. Clearly I've not been anywhere other than in my (non-Covid) fevered mind and clearly it's not been the incredible patch birding that has kept me away from here.
Following the pleasing return of green woodpeckers in April, the spring progressed with typical migrants appearing including wheatear (which according to my very poor records may have been a patch tick), and residents such as hard to find grey partridge and barn owl, which were both squeezed out of the woodwork in April and May. June and July were tedious tick free months before August appeared and delivered the goods with a tree pipit, a patch tick but probably only through previous piss poor ornithological skills and oversight.
Slithering into September teal reappeared on my beloved newly flooded field before a very welcome pair of golden plover briefly paused on the barren, lifeless wastes of the arable field next to the house.
The list now stands at 101.19% so in no way threatening The Proclaimers, or anyone else for that matter, except possibly through actual numbers of species, but then we'd both be miles behind any of the coastal ponces, struggling as we do on our birdless agricultural wastelands.
That do you? Really wasn't worth waiting for was it?